Examples abound, from the botched implementation of the Affordable Care Act to the initial mishandling of Ebola patients in Texas. In that vein comes the National Transportation Safety Board's blistering report blaming lax safety management at Metro-North Railroad for five accidents in 2013-14 that killed six people and injured 126 others.

All were preventable, said acting NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart at a New York press briefing on Tuesday, at which the Federal Railroad Administration also came in for sharp criticism.

The worst of the accidents took place in the Bronx on Dec. 1 when a train hit a dangerous curve at 82 mph when it should have been going no more than 30 mph and derailed, killing four people and injuring at least 61. The probable cause was the train engineer falling asleep at the controls, the NTSB said.

It turned out that the engineer suffered from sleep apnea. More than a decade ago, the NTSB recommended that Metro-North screen engineers for this sleep disorder. But the railroad failed to do so, and the Federal Railroad Administration failed to require such screening. The NTSB also recommended a technical system that would have automatically applied the brakes once the train reached an unsafe speed. This recommendation wasn't followed, either.

And so it went. A crash in Bridgeport last year that injured 65 passengers was caused by improperly maintained track and inadequate track inspection. A track foreman was killed in West Haven last year after a trainee rail traffic controller mistakenly reopened a segment of track that was closed for construction without getting approval from a supervisor or alerting track crew members. Again, there was no backup system.

Heads have rolled at Metro-North. A "safety czar" has been appointed. Officials have conceded there was too much emphasis on meeting schedules at the expense of safety. Commuters deserve trains that are safe and on time. Is that too much to hope for?

"The older I get," the journalist H.L. Mencken once said, "the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology." He was right, especially when it comes to public safety.